These Mortals Be
by dancinginthesunlight
Summary: 'Yeah, Nico Di Angelo decided. She was definitely his type. Maybe honors English wouldn't be so bad after all.' On mythology, Shakespeare, and that girl he can't get out of his head. NicoxOC
1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

**Summary:** Nico di Angelo gets landed in a mortal (boring) high school. Frustration ensues. But even if high school's a major cloud, Nico just might find his silver lining. NicoxOC.

**Rated: **T for many of the reasons you would expect. I'll try to give a warning before any chapter if anything extreme comes up, but throughout this fic you can expect various degrees of swearing and some typical teenage hormone-induced behavior.

**These Mortals Be**

_To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,__  
><em>_Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,__  
><em>_To the last syllable of recorded time;__  
><em>_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools__  
><em>_The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!__  
><em>_~Macbeth 5.5.19-28_

The warning bell grated against his ears with its high-pitched screech. Nico was never going to get used to that sound.

Of course, he reminded himself, this was his first day in a normal (read: boring, mortal) school in seven years. Ever since Percy had rescued him – and Bianca, he remembered with a pang – from that awful prep school, he had refused to set foot in any form of mainstream educational establishment. Tartarus, he'd even skipped out on his lessons at Camp Half-Blood for months at a time, preferring to shadow travel to Camp Jupiter or, occasionally, Hades.

Although, honestly, visits with dad tended not to end too well.

Nico shook his head to clear it and turned his attention back to trying to find room 317.

He was going to kill Chiron for this assignment. He didn't mean that literally, of course, but Nico allowed himself a moment of satisfaction imagining the look on the centaur's face as an army of skeletal warriors surrounded his bed (stable?). Oh yes, revenge would be sweet.

Okay, so camp was running low on satyrs were away on official business (if searching for nymphs in the national park system counted as official business) and needed someone to keep an eye out at Loman High School for potential demigods. And okay, Nico was one of the few trained demigods who was both the right age for the job (seventeen in November) and didn't have a home outside of camp. But really, they had to pick _him_? Notwithstanding the fact that, as a son of Hades, he would probably attract every monster in the state, he really just plain didn't want to be here.

There it was, on the left. Room 317, or, as his schedule indicated, Honors English 11 with Mr. Warren-Smith.

Honors? Whose idiot idea was that?

Oh well. Here goes nothing, he thought, pushing open the door and entering the classroom.

The man he assumed to be Mr. Warren-Smith strode forward.

"Nico?" he asked, accepting the yellow slip of paper the demigod in question passed him, indicating his transfer into this class. "Very well, then. Take a seat."

At least he didn't make him introduce himself to the class. Nico gave an inward prayer of thanks to whatever god oversaw new students.

He surveyed his options. There were two empty desks.

The first was next to some blonde girl who was practically falling out of her shirt. Not that he would have minded the view, but the girl's eyes were running up and down his body in a way that made him feel a little self-conscious.

When she went so far as to _wink_ at him, Nico headed straight for the second desk. He didn't play well with overly flirtatious cheerleaders. Too be honest, they kind of creeped him out.

As he set his books down on the desk, the boy to his right, a sandy-haired kid who had an uncanny resemblance to Apollo offered him a quick smile.

"I'm Chris. Chris Wilson."

"Nico di Angelo."

"Welcome to Loman, Nico." Before Chris could say anything else, a heavy guy in the row behind started talking to him about an upcoming football game. Nico took in Chris's letter jacket. Chris seemed friendly enough, but Nico could see the signs of his popularity in the way he carried himself, the way the other students in the room watched him.

Oh well. At least it was better than the cheerleader.

As Mr. Warren-Smith started class, talking about Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ and instructing the students to open their books to act 4, Nico fixed his attention to the front of the room.

_A/N: Okay, I've done it. I'm taking on another multi-chapter fic (I have also, in an act of adding more substance to an overdone cliché, jumped on the NicoxOC bandwagon). I expect this one to be _much _shorter than "Nothing's Fair in Love and War," probably about 5 or 6 chapters, unless I get carried away. I will try to update frequently, but I'm going to be busy over the rest of the semester, so I can't guarantee anything._

_Next chapter we will actually meet the OC in question, no worries._

_Before I forget: The Shakespeare quotes at the head of each chapter might be a little morbid. This has less to do with the actual content of the story and more to do with the fact that Nico is the son of Hades. This chapter's heading comes from Macbeth, in which Macbeth reacts of the death of his wife._

_The Title of this fic, "These Mortals Be," comes from _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The full line is: "Shall we their fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals be!" I love when Shakespeare gets all meta and refers to plays within his plays. And anyway, it's a fitting title for a fic in which Nico is landed among mortals. _

_Reviews make me smile :-)_


	2. Immortal Longings

**These Mortals Be**

_Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have__  
><em>_Immortal longings in me._

_~Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.282-283_

Nico almost laughed at the scene Mr. Warren-Smith had asked the class to read. From what he could tell, Ceres (Demeter, he corrected mentally), Iris, and Juno (Hera), apparently in Roman form, felt like visiting some guy named Prospero and discussing super-exciting things like love and flowers.

He swore on the River Styx, if the gods were ever reduced to such idle chatter as this, he was going to single-handedly take over Olympus.

And then the girl who had been reading Ceres's lines spoke again:

"_Tell me, heavenly bow,_

_If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,_

_Do now attend the Queen? Since they did plot_

_The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,_

_Her and her blind boy's scandaled company_

_I have forsworn._"

Nico grimaced. It was bad enough talking about this stuff at camp, where at least people were sensitive enough not to say stupid things. But here at mortal school, nobody knew who he was. For all they knew, the gods existed merely for the sake of torturing students. And really, "dusky Dis" was a bit much. And alliteration overkill.

And _of course_ Mr. Warren-Smith had to cut in just then. "So, who can tell me what's going on here?"

Silence.

Slowly, Nico raised his hand. Here goes nothing.

"Ah, yes! Mr. Di Angelo, please. Enlighten us."

"Um," Nico said, feeling Chris's eyes on him and probably any hopes of popularity with it. Good thing he didn't care much about popularity. "Dis is another name for Had – sorry, Pluto – the god of death. He kidnapped Persephone, who was Dem—I mean, Ceres's – daughter and brought her to the underworld, where she accidentally ate some pomegranate seeds. And there's this thing where if anyone eats anything from the underworld, they have to stay there. So Ceres is – I mean, was – kind of pissed about it."

"Dude," Chris whispered, "How do you know all that?"

Nico shrugged. "We learned about it at my, uh, old school."

Mr. Warren-Smith was talking. "Excellent, Mr. Di Angelo. Persephone – or, as the Romans knew her, Proserpina – was abducted by Pluto and forced to stay in the underworld for six months each year. Ceres was said to have been so saddened by her daughter's absence that she refused to allow crops to grow. It was how the Greco-Romans" – Nico winced a little at the blended name. Greeks and Romans were too different to belong in the same word – "explained the seasons. But answer me this," Mr. Warren-Smith said, pointing his ruler at the class, "What's this deal with Venus and her son?"

Nico didn't answer. Aphrodite was usually responsible for everyone's problems, which was all the answer he needed.

Then the girl sitting directly in front of him raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss Carraway?"

"It's from the version of the Persephone story told in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Venus is power-hungry and also a little mad at Persephone, since she's still a virgin, which is apparently some major affront to Venus. And since Venus also wants to extend her domain of love as far as possible – which in this case is the underworld – she sends her son – who is Cupid, by the way – to make Pluto fall in love with Persephone. So Ceres is mad at Pluto, but also at Venus and Cupid, since it's their fault that the whole thing happened in the first place."

"Thank you, Miss Carraway," Mr. Warren-Smith said, his tone indicating, in that teacher-ish way, that it was so _delightful_ to have a student who had read Ovid.

The Carraway girl, Nico noticed, was actually kind of pretty, at least from behind. Her hair was long and brown and pulled back in a loose ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a grey sweatshirt and was drawing something in her notebook.

"Who's she?" he asked Chris.

"Tessa Carraway," Chris said. "Probably the smartest girl in our grade. Not in a show-offy way, though. She's actually pretty cool. Hey Tessa!" he added, raising his voice enough so she could hear him, but not so much that Mr. Warren-Smith could call him out on it. "Do you have a pencil I can borrow?"

The fact that Chris categorized Tessa as "pretty cool" sent a little warning impulse to Nico's head. He was a loner by trade, and really not much of a people person.

As Tessa turned around to hand Chris a pencil, Nico decided that she was pretty from the front, too. She wore very little make-up, but she didn't have to. There wasn't anything stunningly beautiful about her, but she was definitely attractive: a heart-shaped face, attentive light-brown eyes, and full lips.

She was smart. She knew her mythology. She was pretty without trying and totally comfortable with wearing an old sweatshirt to school.

Yeah, Nico Di Angelo decided. She was definitely his type.

Maybe honors English wouldn't be so bad after all.

_A/N: Yay, chapter 2 is all finished! Two updates within a few hours is much faster than normal, but I got carried away with this idea. Prepare for more fluffiness :)_

_Today's quote is Cleopatra's line. The "immortal longings" she is talking about are her feelings of love for Mark Antony, who is now dead. The robe/crown business has to do with Julius Caesar, who is planning on having Cleopatra surrender and parading her around to demonstrate the power of Rome. Cleopatra decides she would rather die with dignity and be with Antony than surrender and be a trophy._

_Next chapter up soon._

_As an aside, many of the characters in this fic were named for very particular reasons. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out where the last names of these characters come from: Mr. Warren-Smith, Chris Wilson, Tessa Carraway, Loman High School. _

_I'll give you the answers in the A/N for the next chapter, but I'd like to see if anyone can figure it out._

_Review please :)_


	3. That one may smile, and smile

**These Mortals Be**

_O most pernicious woman!__  
><em>_O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!__  
><em>_My tables—meet it is I set it down__  
><em>_That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—__  
><em>_At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark._

_~Hamlet, 1.5.105-109_

It was a few days later that he actually got a chance to talk to her, when the bell rang and Tessa left the room, forgetting her notebook on her desk. Nico glanced around, but no one else seemed to notice the notebook, so he grabbed it and followed her out the door.

"Hey," he said, catching up to her. "You left this."

Tessa turned. "Oh. Thanks, uh…" she hesitated.

"Nico," he filled in. "Nico di Angelo."

"Well, Nico di Angelo," she said, "How are you liking Loman?"

He shrugged, trying to figure out what color her eyes were. They weren't gold, exactly, and amber didn't feel like the right adjective to use. Tawny, maybe?

"It's okay. Different than my old school."

Honey. Her eyes were the color of honey.

"Oh. Where was your old school?"

He decided on a half-truth. "New York."

"Huh," Tessa said. "I didn't take you for a New Yorker."

"I've actually lived a lot of places. But New York more than the others."

"That must be cool," Tessa said. Nico thought he heard a little bit of… _something_ in her voice, but he was crap at reading emotions, so he ignored it.

"Have you never lived anywhere else?"

"I wish. It must be so cool, seeing all those different places."

Shrug. "I get around." He winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like, you know…"

Oh gods. Could he be any more awkward?

But Tessa didn't get mad. Instead, she smiled. And laughed a little. "I got it."

She had a nice smile, actually. It made her face light up in a way that Nico couldn't describe his words.

He slapped himself mentally. He was sounding like a lovesick girl from one of the crappy books Drew was always reading. Going on about _smiles_, of all things.

Maybe he really did need to spend more time with dear old Dad.

"Hey," Tessa said suddenly, "You know that project Mr. W-S was going on about? Do you want to work on it together?"

Nico vaguely remembered the teacher saying something about a partnered project on _The Tempest_, but to be honest, he hadn't really been paying attention. Still, he was at a new school and his only sort-of friend in English class so far was Chris, so it would be nice to have someone to work with on whatever this project was.

So he agreed.

"Cool," Tessa smiled again, causing something like electricity to rush through his body. "I'd better get to class. I'll see you around!"

….

"Hey, Nico."

"Dude, seriously?" Nico half-shouted, fumbling around for his clothes. "I know you have a key, but could you at least knock? I'm _changing_!"

"What kind of cousin would I be if I didn't invade your privacy every once in a while?" Percy asked, smirking as Nico realized he'd put his sweatpants on backwards.

"It's my apartment. Show some respect."

"Actually," Percy said. "Technically, it's my apartment. My name's on the lease. And _you're_ under eighteen, a.k.a. too young to live alone."

That had been Nico's agreement with camp. He'd go to mortal school on the condition that he got his own place to live and a credit card, paid for by camp. But of course, legal issues got in the way and even though Nico had a yellowing birth certificate listing his birth date as 1935 back in the Hades cabin (Mr. D tended to be very good at finding old documents when you blackmailed him into it), Chiron insisted that he use his recently acquired driver's license as ID, and since it claimed he was only sixteen. Percy had been called in to handle the legal business. And serve as a periodic chaperone (and general annoyance) whenever he felt like making the drive from Manhattan.

"Watch it," Nico said, heading into the bathroom to fix his pants. "Technically speaking, I'm older than you."

"Try explaining that one to a jury."

Nico couldn't come up with a response, so he settled with a muttered "fuck you" and exited the bathroom, properly dressed.

"So," Percy asked, "meet any cute girls?"

His tone suggested that he was joking, but apparently Nico's face gave something away because Percy laughed and exclaimed, "there is!"

Nico didn't say anything, just fished around in the refrigerator for something to eat. If Percy says something annoying, and no one's there to hear it, does it still matter?

"So, what is she? A demigod? Mortal who can see through the mist?"

Nico grabbed a slice of leftover pizza and made the mistake of letting Percy see his face as he turned to place it in the microwave.

"Oh," Percy said, eyebrows raised. "Regular mortal."

Was his expression really that easy to read?

"_Not_ that what your saying has anything to do with reality," Nico started, "But what's the problem with regular mortal girls?"

"There's no problem," Percy said. "It's just… if you were to actually have a relationship with this girl, how are you going to keep half your life a secret from her?"

"Good thing there's no such girl, then, huh," Nico said, even as an image of a certain honey-eyed girl flashed through his mind, her smile remaining even after the rest of her face had faded away, like some kind of freaking Cheshire Cat.

_A/N: And there you have it._

_Today's quote – Hamlet is actually referring to his mother's romantic relationship with his uncle/father's murderer here, but as it was talking about smiles… well, I had to use it._

_In terms of last names: _**MissAnnThropee** _(side note: thanks for the constructive review!) was correct that Tessa Carraway is named after Nick Carraway from"The Great Gatsby." Chris Wilson = Myrtle Wilson, also of Gatsby fame. Loman High School is after Willie Loman of "Death of a Salesman." And lastly, Mr. Warren-Smith is named after Septimus Warren-Smith from "Mrs. Dalloway." Anyone see the "one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other" connection with these names? No? Ah well, next chapter._

_Review?_


	4. Mortal in Nature

**These Mortals Be**

_We that are true lovers run into strange capers;_

_But as all is mortal in nature,_

_So is all nature in love mortal__in folly._

_~As You Like It 2.4.53-56_

"I was thinking we could do these two passages," Tessa said, holding open her copy of _The Tempest_ and showing him the pages she had dog-eared. "Unless you had any other ideas."

Nico shrugged. School was over and they were working in the library. Or rather, Tessa was working, and he was trying to, but kept getting caught up by how her hair looked in the light that streamed in through the windows. "Your idea sounds good."

Tessa glanced at him. "Were you even paying attention when Mr. W-S assigned the project?" She rolled her eyes at him, but didn't sound mad at all, which was good. "We're supposed to analyze two quotes and write a paper about how they relate to _The Tempest_ as one of Shakespeare's last works."

Nico said something intelligent along the lines of, "Uh, okay."

"And I was _thinking_ that we could use two of Prospero's speeches from the end of the play – the one from the epilogue and this one in act 5 – see, it starts with 'Our revels now are ended' and it's really cool because Shakespeare's being all meta about it and it's almost as if _he's_ Prospero—"

"Whoa, slow down," Nico said. "I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?"

Tessa laughed as if she got this reaction a lot. "Sorry. I was thinking about this last night—"

"You were thinking about _Shakespeare_ in your free time?"

"Hey, I have to do something while Valerie gives the squad a lecture on how to put on eyeshadow."

"You're a cheerleader?" Nico exclaimed. Valerie Earnshaw, he had learned, was the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad (and Chris's girlfriend of the week).

"What," Tessa asked, "Is it really that unbelievable?"

Nico tried to recover some semblance of tact. "It's just… not what I was expecting."  
>"And what were you expecting?"<p>

He dodged the question. "Cheerleaders actually spend practice talking about make-up? I thought that was just in the movies."

"It's a Valerie thing," Tessa said. "She's insane."

"And you're on her squad because…?"

She sighed. "Because this school has no gymnastics team and cheerleading counts for gym credits."

"You get out of gym for yelling really loud and waving pom-poms?"

"I get out of gym for being tossed in the air by underclassmen that have no idea what they're doing. And putting up with Valerie."

"It's just…" Nico started.

"I' m not a bottle-blonde wearing skimpy clothing and ten pounds of make-up?"

"Well, yeah."

"I wouldn't talk about stereotypes if I were you," Tessa said.

"What do you mean?"

"Let's see… black converse, dark jeans, T-shirt for some death metal band I've never heard of…" she ticked each point off on her fingers, "and you spend your free time studying up on Greco-Roman mythology. Yeah. Total punk-rocker bad-ass right here."

"What?" his voice cracked in the middle of the word, making it sound even more high-pitched than it would have come out anyway. How in Hades did she know—

"That stuff about the Persephone myth you were talking about in class a few days ago," Tessa continued. "You had to have read about it somewhere. Did you read Ovid?"

Oh. That.

"We did a unit on mythology at my old school," Nico said. There, that was believable. "Each of us had to research a different god. I had Hades."

Which should cover up any other mistakes he made.

"Oh," Tessa said. Nico heard a note of disappointment in her voice.

"You thought I was some big anti-stereotype."

"Well, yeah." She shrugged. "Whatever. It was a long-shot anyway. I barely know you."

"So let's change that."

"What?"

"Are you busy this Saturday?" he said it without thinking, kicking himself mentally as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Of course she's busy. She's a freaking cheerleader; she probably has a half-dozen football players lined up to ask her out.

"No," she smiled.

Oh. Well then.

"Can we hang out? I want to show you something."

"Are you asking me out?"

He spun her question around. "Do you want me to be?"

She ducked her head, letting her hair fall down over her face so he couldn't read her expression. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I think I do."

Nico smiled, but then Percy's words from the day before started ratcheting around his mind: _if you were to actually have a relationship with this girl, how are you going to keep half your life a secret from her?_

_A/N: And scene._

_Hee. Gotta love the fluff._

_Today's quote – Touchstone, the apparently philosophical jester, of _As You Like It._ (Actually, in most Shakespeare plays, the fool/jester/drunk character is usually the one with the deepest and most important comments of the play [think the drunken porter in "Hamlet", or Feste in "Twelfth Night"])._

_Also, we've got another last name – Valerie Earnshaw. And now that you've all seen where some of the other names come from, it shouldn't be hard to figure this one out._

_And apologies to any cheerleaders out there: no offense intended; you really aren't bad at all (well, except the few of you who think you live in a movie. But the rest of you are normal, nice, decent human beings)._

_The passages Tessa is referring to are some of my favorite Shakespeare quotes of all time. But more on that later. If you were wondering, though, they can be found in "The Tempest" in 4.1.165-180 and the epilogue, lines 1-20. I actually wrote an essay on them once upon a time, so I could prattle on endlessly about them, but I won't put you through that :)_

_Review?_


	5. This sharp-pointed sword

**These Mortals Be**

_Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made__  
><em>_For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.__  
><em>_If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,__  
><em>_Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword._

_~Richard III, 1.2.176-179_

On Saturday he took Tessa to lunch at a restaurant a few blocks away from his apartment.

"So you've lived all over," she was saying. "Where are you from, like, originally?"

"D.C.," he answered truthfully, but hoped she wouldn't ask any other questions because the fact that he didn't remember much from before he was ten years old wasn't a topic he wanted to get into with her.

"Huh," she said. "What's it like there? Politicians all over?"

"Not really." _Just be evasive._ "I was really young when we moved."

Tessa started on her next question. "Do you have any siblings?"

Oh, shit. "I had a sister," he corrected, and Tessa must have caught the past tense because she instantly jumped into an apology.

"Oh my God, I had no idea," she said. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. It's been almost seven years since she – well, yeah." He ordinarily would have just said that Bianca had _died_, but mortals were touchy about the whole death thing (actually, most demigods were, too, but still).

"I'm sorry," Tessa repeated. "It must be hard."

"Yeah. It is."

A lump formed in his throat, and Nico took a sip of his water. He was _not_ going to cry.

And that's when the door of the restaurant flew open, hitting the wall behind it with a bang.

"_Half-Blood_." The voice was a hiss, barely more than a whisper, but Nico heard it loud and clear.

He spun around, caught sight of serpent tail, the trail of dead potted plants lined up outside the door. Shit. What had Annabeth called this?

_Basiliskos_.

Too bad he didn't have the Sword of Gryffindor on hand, he thought dryly, pulling out his stygian iron blade.

"Uh, Nico? What's going on?"

It took him a second to remember that Tessa couldn't see through the mist. Whatever this looked like to her, she probably wouldn't realize the danger she was in – the danger everyone in this restaurant was in. The basilisk was in the process of trampling some more of the potted plants lined up along the far wall – no, not trampling. Breathing on them. He vaguely remembered Annabeth's lesson on this: basilisks breathed out poison. Their gaze could kill (Harry Potter had gotten that right). And their skin was coated in poison.

So he was all set, as long as he didn't look at, touch, or get breathed on by the basilisk. Great.

A few mortals had left, muttering something about pesticides damaging the environment. Is that what this looked like to them? Some kind of evil gardener?

"_I ssssmell a half-blood_," the basilisk hissed.

"Tessa," Nico breathed, eyes trained on the basilisk's legs (not its eyes), watching its every step. "I need you to do something that's not going to make any sense. I'll explain later. But you have to leave. Um, out the back door."

"Nico, what—" but then she stopped. Nico risked a glance at her face; her eyes were wide with… _something_. Shock, maybe. Or fear.

"You'd better explain this," she said. And then she ran.

"_Half-blood_," the basilisk hissed, finally turning its attention on Nico. It approached slowly, but when Nico slashed at it with his sword, the venom on the monster's skin only turned to steam. The basilisk itself was unhurt.

Well. If this monster fought by killing on contact, he'd just have to use another method. And the basilisk couldn't kill something that was already dead.

So he summoned a few zombie soldiers.

Nico could feel his energy fading with each step the soldiers took.

At first the basilisk tried to swat them away, but when the skeletons remained mobile, it hissed angrily, "_Sssson of Hadessss_."

"Yeah," Nico said, his voice strained from the amount effort he was devoting to keeping the skeleton warriors up and in action. "That'd be me."

It only took a few stabs with the soldiers' swords to disintegrate the basilisk, and Nico used his last bit of energy to duck beneath a table as a wave of poison splashed against the wall behind him.

He found Tessa crouched outside the window, peering in with a confused look on her face. She jumped when he tapped her on the shoulder.

"We need to talk," he said.

She just nodded.

"I live near here. Do you want to—"

"Yeah."

_A/N: _

_I owe you all a massive apology for basically ignoring this fic for a year. I'm not going to bother making excuses. I'm just really sorry. :-(_


	6. Done to Death

**These Mortals Be**

_Done to death by slanderous tongue_

_Was the Hero that here lies_

_~Much Ado About Nothing, 5.3.3-4_

Not a single one of the scenarios in which Nico had imagined bringing a girl back to his apartment involved said girl eyeing him warily the whole time and refusing to talk to him. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose; he could already feel a headache coming on. Summoning those zombie soldiers had taken a lot out of him.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. Tessa followed.

"So, this is where I live."

She glanced around, eyebrows furrowing. "One bedroom?"

"Uh, yeah."

"But what about your parents?"

This was going to be harder than he'd thought. Why in Tartarus was she so perceptive?

"They're sort of out of the picture. Actually, they're sort of why I owe you an explanation about what just happened."

She just sat there looking confused.

"Tessa," he said, "What exactly did you see back there at the restaurant?"

She drew in a deep breath, leaning against the wall and playing with her hair. Under ordinary circumstances, Nico would have been imagining his own fingers running through her curls, but this was serious. It was also probably going to get a lot of Olympians and demigods pretty pissed at him since he was breaking what pretty much amounted to the number one rule of being a demigod: _don't tell mortals_.

"Everything was normal. Some guy walked in and said he was a health inspector, and then you pulled out a _sword_ and started flipping out. You told me to leave, and then…" she stopped.

"And then?"

"And then everything… _changed_. The inspector guy – he was – was…" she faltered, and for a second Nico was worried she might start crying, and gods knew how he was going to deal with _that_. But then she took another breath. "It sounds crazy, but he turned into this snake thing. And then you…"

She stopped, meeting his eyes for the first time since the incident.

"And then I summoned zombie soldiers to kill the thing. Yeah."

"Am I crazy?" Tessa whispered. "That's it, right? I'm going insane?"

"You're not crazy."

He paced back and forth, trying to come up with the right words to explain this.

"Remember when you asked me how I knew the Persephone story?"

"I asked if you'd read Ovid, and you said you knew mythology from that unit at your old school."

"Yeah, well, I lied to you."

"You read Ovid?"

"Gods, no." Nico realized too late that he had referred to the gods in plural, but it's not like it mattered. She was going to know in a few minutes anyway.

"I know mythology because Hades is my dad."

Tessa burst out laughing. Not exactly the reaction he'd been expecting.

"This is a joke, right? You don't seriously believe—" something in his expression made her stop, her tone softening. "Nico…"

And now she thought he was a nut case.

"I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous," Nico said. "But it's true. The Greek gods are real, and sometimes they have kids."

"So, what," she said, "You think you're a god?"

"Demigod," he corrected. "My mom was mortal." She didn't say anything, so he pressed on. "Look, I know you don't believe me, and I know it sounds insane, but how else do you explain what you saw in that café? That snake-thing you saw was a basilisk. Pliny the Elder wrote about it, if you want to look it up. Although he was Roman, and I'm Greek, and Romans and Greeks don't really get along, but still."

He could feel himself getting sidetracked, but explaining this was hard. He had only been ten, after all, when Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Thalia had explained it all to him. And it had made sense, with that Myth-O-Magic card game he used to play, and besides, he had been searching for an answer since no one anywhere seemed to know anything about his and Bianca's parents. But then again, most crazy things seem to make sense to a ten-year-old.

He turned back to Tessa. "How else do you explain the fact that I can raise undead skeletons and have them fight monsters? You _saw_ them at the café. And maybe it's because I come from a really freakish family."

She regarded him cautiously. "And let's say that this is all – hypothetically – true. What else can you do?"

"I can shadow travel when I'm with Mrs. O'Leary – she's a hellhound," he explained, as if that would make any sense to Tessa.

And then somehow he was explaining everything to her, from his mother (he barely remembers her) to the Lotus Hotel (a blur) to Bianca (Nico almost started crying at one point, but managed to keep himself together) to Camp Half-Blood to the Hunters to Camp Jupiter, of all things. He talked about the quests he had been on and what he had done with his free time. He brought up Percy and Annabeth and Thalia and Jason and Hazel, of course.

And he watched Tessa take it all in, her eyes wide and a little bit incredulous but not really disbelieving. Not anymore.

"Wow," she said, hours later, when he was finished. "Just… wow."

"So you believe me?"

"Yeah. I believe you." Then she scrunched up her eyebrows in confusion. "But… you said mortals can't see through the mist."

"They can't. Except for clear-sighted ones, like Rachel Dare or Percy's mom."

"Then how do you explain how I saw the basilisk?"

"I don't know."

They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

"So now what happens?" Tessa asked.

"I don't know."

More silence. Nico almost couldn't take it. She knew _everything_ about him now, and yet she wasn't saying anything. He would give practically anything to know what was on her mind right now.

"What happens…" Tessa's voice was small, timid. "What happens if a mortal and a… _demigod_…" the word sounded awkward on her lips and she trailed off.

"If they what?" Nico asked, hoping against hope that she meant what he thought she did.

"What if they…"

And then she kissed him, full on the lips.

Which is what Percy walked in on a few minutes later when he let himself into the apartment to check on Nico.

Nico was furious, breaking away from Tessa only to yell at Percy.

"What did I tell you about knocking before you come into my apartment!"

Percy turned red and let himself out the back, and Nico was more than happy to resume his previous activities.

_A/N: Okay. The end._

_I don't know how I feel about this fic. I started it about a million years ago and finally got around to finishing it (sorry, I know, I'm a horrible person). Still, though, it feels a little too insta-lovey for my tastes. If I ever decide to edit this, it's going to take a lot of work to tone down the fluff to normal standards. And some subplots. And a few less moments where Nico stares at Tessa's eyes or hair or just Tessa in general._

_Also, I'm going to lower the rating to K+, since honestly nothing T-worthy actually happens in this fic._

_Thanks for reading! -dancinginthesunlight_


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